


It Deepens Like A Coastal Shelf

by Popchop



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Spoilers, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:18:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8141863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Popchop/pseuds/Popchop
Summary: Delphi receives a visit from her legal counsel, and has only one request





	1. Azkaban

The wizarding prison of Azkaban stands in an island in the north sea. It is, probably, somewhere in the Outer Hebrides, where winter is a constant rather then a season, and trees grow sideways, but its exact location is imprecisely known. Most people don't want to know, and those who do want to know probably shouldn't be told. There is a dark history at Azkaban's core, and the things that drew the dementors to the place – and made it such a suitable prison – haunt it still. In short: it is miserable, and continues to be so even without the supernatural aura of sadness that hung about it.  
To get to the prison, one must first obtain permission from the Ministry of Magic: for a lawyer, this is not terribly difficult. For visitors, it is a little more so, but not impossible. Then the visitor must – with an Auror – take a long boat trip out to the island, brooms being strictly prohibited. This is assuming fair weather, which is not a given in the north sea, and in some seasons the island is near-inaccessible. Once there, the visitor is required to surrender their wand (something many witches and wizards find difficult – it leaves a strange hole in the heart to be away from ones own wand, and in a place with the most dangerous members of their own kind in Britain) and almost all other personal possessions, and are issued with a visitor ID badge. Gifts are permitted, though there is a strict screening process (many of the witches in Azkaban are, unsurprisingly, not well loved by the general public).  
Susan Bones had done this trip a thousand times over the years, and now it was the year of our lady two thousand and twenty, and she was forty years old and tired. The visiting room was a close and dull white, as though someone had taken the idea of white making a space look lighter and larger, and somehow turned it inside out. It contained a table and two chairs in the same unforgiving shade. She set out her notebooks, a bottle of ink, her quill, and waited. She would have brought tea, but food was strictly forbidden, and she couldn't bear the insanely sweet builders tea the Aurors all seemed to drink.   
Delphini – slight (almost embarrassingly so), with long brown hair and a long narrow nose, and a heavy mancunian accent that gave her voice a surprising warmth – was not what you would expect a dark witch to look like or sound like. She slouched as she was escorted into the room, and sank into the hard chair with a sigh. Susan was certain that if she had a little more energy, she would have put her feet up on the table.   
“Afternoon, Susan” she said, almost cheerfully. The aurors did not leave the room, but Susan had learned to ignore them: they would not (could not) report anything to the prosecution, even if it were uncomfortable having to have guards even inside the meeting room. “How go the wheels of the Ministry?”   
“They grind slow, but exceedingly fine, Ms Lestrange” Susan said levelly, shuffling her notes. “I hope you're being treated well”   
“Oh, they haven't poisoned me yet!” Delphini leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, and entirely too far into Susan's bubble of personal space. Susan did her best not to let that bother her. As a young witch, she had witnessed the trials which had followed the Second Wizarding War, and this young woman – not a child, she was years older then Susan had been at the Battle of Hogwarts – was no Mulciber or Dolohov.   
“I'm glad to hear it” she kept her tone even. “I'm here to discuss your appeal -”  
“Oh, don't bother” Delphi said airily. “When I leave this place, it'll be under my own power,” and she shot a look and a grin at one of the aurors, who frowned, “not under theirs. You tried your very hardest, but you could never find an uninterested jury. Everyone knows who my father was, and I'm sure if those witless mudbloods could resurrect him to execute him a thousand times they would do! But then, they wouldn't have the guts, would they?” she frowned, apparently losing her train of thought. “No, I wanted to talk about you, Susan, not the appeal which we'll lose -”  
“The evidence for some of your crimes is very thin on the ground” Susan said firmly. “And in some cases took place in what I can only describe as some sort of alternate timeline, and there are very few reliable witnesses” And, of course, Harry Potter – not just as himself, but as the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Susan had barely known famous Harry Potter at school, though they had been in the same year, but they had clashed more then once under the auspices of the Wizengamot since. It was hard to argue against him, but then, they'd all lost things – friends, family – in the wars, and she refused to let him have any special claim on heroism or misery. “I have a few new leads to chase down, and I think the most important is that we've finally tracked down Euphemia Rowle”  
Delphini sat up straight, her eyes fixed on Susan with what it was hard not to interpret as fear turning rapidly to anger. “That old hag? I don't want her to talk about anything. I don't want her there. I don't want to see her, do you understand me?”   
“I understand” Susan said soothingly, “But she will be very useful. A childhood of neglect, a conspiracy to keep your name from even Hogwarts' methods of detection, the Ministry failing in its duty to you as a young witch who should have been protected and cared for...” She couldn't erase the woman's crimes – not all of them, because she confessed to murder at least in front of a large number of witnesses – but she could perhaps clear her of some of the lesser charges, and turn the Wizengamot's minds to justice rather then revenge. Surely the young woman in front of her deserved justice just as much as the child she had murdered. Everyone deserved justice.  
Later, when she was safely home in her own tiny flat – though she had the gold to own something larger, it felt safe – with her cats, she made herself a very large and fortifying pot of tea, and took a large plate of biscuits. Visiting Azkaban always rattled her despite herself, not least because it still contained witches and wizards who in a very real sense were part of the reason she did not feel safe in a larger house, where she could not keep track of who was inside and where they were.   
Her family had once been prosperous and numerous, and now it was Susan and her tiny fledgling family alone. They would be home soon, and then she could relax knowing they were safely under her roof where she could protect them. Not that there was really anything to protect them from, these days, but she was very aware of her – and their – auror tails. Taking Lestrange's case (she was not entirely convinced that He Who Must Not Be Named could have a daughter, if only to protect herself from considering what that could have been like) had made her very unpopular among some parts of the wizarding world. Only the week before, the Daily Prophet had written a very unflattering profile piece, and used an equally unflattering photograph; she rather imagined they would publish her address and suggest people sent their death threats there rather then writing into the letters page if they thought they could get away with it.  
The thing that bothered her most, though, was Lestrange's request: she would co-operate fully with her legal counsel... if her legal counsel could get Harry Potter to visit her in Azkaban, just once. She dragged her note-paper towards her, and began, very laboriously and carefully, to compose a letter. She was still working on it when Zarya came home, having picked up seven year old Edmund from school (a muggle primary school before Hogwarts, which Daisy had insisted on, because neither were giving up their career to homeschool him and Daisy wanted him to have a little more idea of that half of his heritage then Susan had ever had. So far, no memory modification charms had been necessary), her key and the passphrase deactivating the warding charms around the door, and the letter was temporarily forgotten in a rush of exclamations over the picture Edmund had brought home from school, the making of dinner, and fending off demands for a pet niffler (“no! We'd need a big house with a garden! I will consider a pygmy puff, if you can make me a good case for it...”). Edmund was to have a muggle friend to stay at the weekend, which meant a thorough going over of the flat to remove any magical items on Friday afternoon before Susan picked them up from school.   
Later – after Edmund had been put, protesting all the way, to bed – they sat down with a glass of wine on the sofa, and Susan unburdened herself.  
“I just feel like... we failed her. How did none of us know about it? How did this all get covered up? The statement Rowle gave about how she raised her... it's just appalling”   
“You were children” Daisy had rested her head on Susan's shoulder, snuggled into her like they were two halves of a puzzle. “Children who went through a war, and I still can't understand that -”  
“Oh, neither can I” Susan chuckled darkly. “When I look at my just-graduated clerks and assistants, and think of them going through what we went through! But not all of us were children, somebody should have noticed Bellatrix's absence during certain key events and put two and two together, and somebody should have worked out where Rodolphus went when he escaped, and someone put some serious magic together to hide her from the Sorting Hat and I don't know who yet! The Ministry just want it over and done with, by which I mostly mean Hermione Granger wants it over and done with even if she's promising an investigation, and she's Potter's sister-in-law and they've been close since school, and why does politics all have to be so incestuous?!”  
“Because you're a tiny interbred community trying to pretend to a system of government that's also your largest employer, and also you almost all went to the same boarding school?” Daisy said, “Honestly, getting out and marrying me was the best thing you ever did”   
“Well, that's true” Susan lapsed into glum silence, staring into the fire. The wizard community was smaller now – she'd seen the census reports – then it had ever been, with two wars taking their toll. She had it on good authority that the ministry was debating strategies to encourage them all to have more children, which was something she'd been thinking about lately – there was maternity leave, and childcare was decidedly manageable... “So how was your day?”   
“Didn't visit any creepy wizard prisons” Daisy said lightly. “Although if I catch Bryony Dursley sneaking out of school one more time...”  
Susan laughed, despite herself, and kissed the top of Daisy's head. “Let's put her in Azkaban. What's the worst that could happen?”   
“She breaks out,” Daisy said hopefully, “goes on the run, and I never have to teach her again”   
“Everyone benefits!”   
It took her a week to get a response back from the Head of Magical Law Enforcement (it always struck her as funny to hear that title given to Potter, when a little voice in the back of her head insisted it should be Auntie Amelia), which boiled down to: No, in the Strongest Terms Possible. A few hours later, on her way out of the Ministry, she received another owl. This time, the answer was 'Yes', with a signature. She fully expected another one backing out, but nothing came.

The Head of Magical Law Enforcement did not need permission to visit Azkaban – in fact, he made a point of taking rotations there, like every one of his Aurors – but he had thought long and hard about it. He had talked to Ginny – snatched conversations, for it was the Christmas holidays and he did not want their trouble-making children to try and take this very adult and terrible matter into their own hands. Again. He had worked so hard to try to give them a normal childhood, and failed (perhaps because he did not know what a normal childhood looked like) – and she had offered him comfort but very little advice.   
Christmas was made stranger by Scorpius Malfoy's place at the Christmas table, and stranger yet by Ginny's invitation of Draco because to do otherwise would be inexplicably rude (he felt that perhaps she felt sorry for him, and thought that she was a good deal more forgiving then Harry himself was). He had politely declined – something about urgent business, which Ron later said was probably code for brooding alone in Malfoy Manor – but seemed cheered by the offer. The Potters had taken on the hosting duties that had once belonged to Ginny's parents, which meant that it largely fell to Harry as he was more excited by Christmas then any other occasion in the calendar.   
Not all of the children had come home from Hogwarts for Christmas, but there were still what seemed like half the wizarding children of Britain underfoot – Weasleys and Granger-Weasleys, Potters and Delacours, Prewetts and Johnsons and assorted friends and relatives that no one was quite sure how they fit in – and the house glittered with laughter and sorcery. Teddy and their grandmother Andromeda arrived a little late – she was having trouble getting out of the house nowadays, but made a special effort for Christmas – and they and Victoire spent the holiday being awkward, in an endearing sort of way. They had broken up the summer before, and Harry had had to reassure Teddy that just because they weren't dating his niece that didn't mean they weren't part of the family. In the aftermath of the breakup, it had come out that they weren't entirely sold on the concept of gender, which the family had embraced with grace (for the most part): after all, hadn't their mother been just the same?   
There was a very brief boxing day visit from the Dursleys. Dudley was clearly uncomfortable with the house and with the witches and wizards, but he made an effort. They had reached a sort of cordial relationship based on an extreme amount of effort by Dudley to make up for the awful child he had been (and a certain level of understanding on Harry's part that he had not been the only one caught up in that toxic dynamic). It helped that one of Dudley's own daughters attended Hogwarts, and Dudley was extremely grateful to have someone in the family to help him navigate all the difficulties that came with it. It was a tense and sometimes very difficult relationship, and he was very grateful when boxing day was over.   
But now the holidays were over, and the real work began. He had talked to Hermione about it – once wearing their ministry hats, and once wearing their friend hats, a useful distinction – and had come to the conclusion that there was no harm that the woman could do him, and much that they might learn. She hadn't spilled a drop about any Death Eater contacts she might have made (the old guard might have mostly died off, but there were always younger wizards who might buy into the old-fashioned pureblood ideology in a new exciting way), or any of the dark creatures she might have spoken to, deeper plans she might have laid. Anything she might say might help them identify a threat in the future, and Harry could even concede some little things to her – some small comforts – if she was co-operative.   
“She might try to kill you” Hermione had said. The two of them sat on a bench in Regent's Park, watching heavily-wrapped muggle children kicking a ball around between them. Hermione had suggested bringing bread to feed the ducks, and then had had to explain to Harry (who had never seen the muggle films Hermione was referring to – something she had grown increasingly resigned to) what she found so funny. “Again, I mean”   
“It's possible” Harry conceded, stretching out his legs a little further. Hermione's were tucked neatly underneath the bench, and he could tell she was on edge from the way she had put her wand in an easily accessible place. “But if she could perform wandless magic beyond the flight thing, and I am dying to know where she learned that trick, I think she would have tried to escape by now”   
“I'm probably going to lose my job” Hermione said abruptly, eyes tracking something off in the distance Harry couldn't see.“I haven't told Ron yet”   
“You're – what?!”   
“People aren't happy with how we handled the whole... thing” Hermione replied, and she sounded a little tired, and a little resigned, and very done. “And they're right, Harry – we should have destroyed that time turner the moment we got our hands on it, or at least put it somewhere really safe”   
“I liked that puzzle-charm” Harry muttered, not looking at her.   
“It was very... Snape” Hermione said, and he could hear her little breath out as she smiled. “Do you remember that thing with the poisons? When we went after the philosopher's stone?”  
“Oh, yes!” Harry grinned, despite himself. “If you're hiding your magical items behind a set of traps and logic puzzles a trio of eleven year olds can penetrate -”  
“- even if they include the brightest witch of her age -” Hermione said primly.  
“You're doing something wrong” they chorused together, and laughed.   
“Hell. We thought they had all the answers, didn't we?” Harry said, and leaned back in his seat, relaxing just a little. “And then you get there and realise no one's given you the instruction leaflet”   
“Maybe you feel that way” Hermione said primly, “But I happen to be in charge of my life”   
“There we go - don't admit defeat yet” Harry said cheerfully, and he reached out and squeezed her hand. “And for gods sake, talk to Ron. He's better at all this strategic nonsense then I ever was – look what he did for your re-election campaign last year”   
“I should” she said morosely, and shook him off. “But maybe it's time. I've wanted to go into research-witchery for a while, and I feel like I've achieved most of what I set out to do -”   
“Oh, no, Hermione Granger, don't you dare give in because you made one mistake” Harry said, getting up. “We are... we are going to go and get butterbeers – I'll call Ron, he'll be dying for an excuse to get out of the joke shop -”   
“Alright, maybe, I -” she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes, and Harry realised abruptly that she might have been about to cry, and stood up. “It's just all so... frustrating. It feels like every time we get somewhere, the spectre of Voldemort crops up all over again and ruins everything”  
“I don't think we're ever going to escape it entirely” Harry said gently.   
“Oh, Harry, I didn't mean -”   
“I know what you meant” Harry said, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. He still remembered what Hermione had sacrificed to help him, that last year – her parents memories had never quite been the same, even with help from St Mungos. Sometimes, she was just too good at what she did. “Come on. Let's go to the Leaky Cauldron. Just the three of us, like old times”   
He wondered when they'd lost that old-times enthusiasm and when everything had begun to feel like an uphill struggle.


	2. Answer for Answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delphi and Harry meet.

The wizards prison of Azkaban was built as a fortress, and the dementors flocked to it in response to the terrible things which happened there. They did not originate them, nor were they the worst of it – which makes one wonder what the worst of it was, that dementors (who devour light and happiness and goodness) were a symptom. There are no more dementors in Azkaban. They were driven off after the second wizarding war, and are now (perhaps rightly) hunted wherever they are found. The trip to Azkaban was dreadful in January, even with magical assistance, and the storm that whipped up around them reminded Harry of another storm in the north sea, an awful long time ago. He shivered, and thought of Hagrid (kind, genuine, always his friend) instead – the best part of that storm.   
The interview was conducted in the office set aside for Harry in Azkaban, at the top of one of the taller towers (because that was how it worked). It was a spare and spartan space, unlike his office in the ministry, which was crowded with papers and maps and reference books (although perhaps not crammed quite so full as Hermione's office with those) – although most of his paperwork there was in a permanent state of mostly undone, something which drove Hermione spare.  
Delphine had lost weight since he had last seen her and it had given her something of her mother's (alleged mother's) terrifying mien. Harry found it hard not to conflate her with Bellatrix, who had been a monster. By the time Harry had known (fought) her, she had been the sort of monster who would torture a child because to her, it was the most obvious way of getting what you wanted, and the thought of her – it wasn't a good thought. He cleared it out of his mind, because heaping old trauma and war-wounds on top of the situation would not help. He could compartmentalise. No one here was under threat (except maybe her), and he held every card.   
He let the silence play out, which was maybe something Dumbledore would have done, and let her make the first move.  
“Tell me about my father” she said suddenly, impulsively, and leaned forward, the manacles around her wrists clacking.   
“Your father?” He was taken aback.  
“My father” she said firmly, and then leaned back, swinging her feet up so that they rested on Harry's desk. “You knew him best”  
“I knew him – what?” he choked, staring at her like she had grown an extra head, which she might as well have done.   
“Oh, yes” she said, arms folded, eyes intent on meeting his. “I've met quite a few of His followers, but none of them knew him. Dumbledore probably knew him best, and I can hardly ask him, so there's you. You defeated him, you fought him, you played at being him well enough, your wife was him for a bit, so tell me about my father”   
“I don't think -”   
“I'll tell you about his followers” she said promptly. “I'll tell you about my followers, and don't you want to know how I got into Hogwarts? Where I got my wand? Or where Fenrir's children are? An answer for an answer, Potter”   
“Alright” he said, regaining his composure, because he did want to know – he desperately wanted to know. The werewolves were a barely contained problem, one that had only grown worse in the decades since the Battle of Hogwarts, and he understood their grievances and their fear of the rest of the Wizarding world, but they needed to be made safe, there might not be a cure but they could do so much better and live so much better - “If you'll consent to veritaserum – and I will not, cannot reveal any information that may conflict with my job” He would never, ever give it to someone to drink without their consent, no matter what he might gain.   
“Done” she swung her legs off of the table, and leaned forward, extending a hand. “I swear on my word as a witch, I'll drink your potion and and match you truth for truth”   
The potion, one of those kept on hand, was duly produced by Lawford, who at twenty two was the very youngest of Harry's aurors. She had a round face and a beaky nose, and sometimes reminded Harry uncomfortably of Neville during his brief career as an auror, all earnestness and elbows. He thought she was muggleborn, but wasn't sure – those old barriers were slowly (creakingly slowly) breaking down. She sat in now, to play secretary to whatever came out. Harry trusted her just as much as he would any of the aurors, though he would have to remember to talk to her when this was done. She was too young to remember any of this as something that wasn't covered in Professor Binn's eternal lectures, and would need a talking to about what she might have heard, and who she might want to speak to about it. Just in case.  
Delphine downed the potion in one gulp, straight from the bottle, though Harry had offered her tea. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, staring at him in a manner reminiscent of a shark who scented blood in the water.   
“I get to go first” she said, not lowering her eyes. “What was my father like, as a child, as Tom Riddle? I read in your biography...”   
Harry hesitated, not sure what to tell her, then resolved to answer as honestly as he could. “Lonely. Brilliant. Manipulative. Cruel. He grew up in a muggle orphanage, and he never wanted to go back there” He'd empathised with that, though with hindsight he suspected that that fact had been chosen for him to empathise with. He wouldn't have gone back to the Dursleys if he could have possibly avoided it, and he'd been so far from breaking away from them at twelve. “He was a monster even then, though, and when he released the basilisk from the Chamber of Secrets, it maimed a good many people, and even killed one”   
She would have known that, if she'd gone to Hogwarts – since Moaning Myrtle had discovered how wonderful a story it was, he had heard that she had not stopped telling it. The horcruxes weren't part of the story he could tell, though, as it would be better not to encourage a repeat of the whole affair.   
“He framed a very good friend of mine for her murder. He also murdered your grandfather – his father – and your great-grandfather and mother, because he couldn't take the idea that they were muggles. He even framed your great-uncle for it” Delphi's eyes narrowed at that. “He couldn't stand that his blood wasn't pure, that the man his mother loved – if you could call it love, because he only stayed so long as she dosed him with love potion, the poor bastard – wasn't a wizard. He was... sixteen? That must be about right. That was during the war, of course, and the wizarding world was distracted by Grindelwald -” who had died alone and friendless in prison “- whose ideas I think Tom Riddle took very much to heart. So. Voldemort started as he meant to go on, by wiping out what remained of his own family”   
He had wondered idly, once or twice, in the small hours of the morning when the nightmares were bad and he couldn't sleep, what might have happened if Merope Gaunt had tracked down the Riddles and given Tom to them instead. Would it have changed anything, or would they just have died earlier, if they had taken him in and thought of him as family? If he had been taught anything by Dumbledore, it was that love prevailed where it was allowed to thrive (however hard that was to put into practice), so would it have...? It was a middle-of-the-night question with no answer.   
“My question” he said firmly, shutting down any attempt at a follow up. “Where is Fenrir's old pack?”  
“Hm. They wouldn't join me, you know” Delphine said lazily. “They were too busy trying to be plain old wolves in the Carpathian mountains. They were in the Tatras six months ago, and I shouldn't think they've moved on too far, they had too many children with them”   
Harry nodded silently. Rescuing those children was a priority for the Ministry and its foreign allies – not all of them were their children, and he could hope that perhaps not all of them were werewolves yet.   
“Now – my question” Delphi said brightly. “He and my mother – were they very much in love?”   
“No” Harry said bluntly. “Voldemort was incapable of love – or at least, had rejected it entirely. Bellatrix might have loved him, or been afraid of him, or... whatever happened between them, but there was no mutual affection”  
“He would have loved me” Delphi murmured, and Harry shook his head, wordless.   
“How did you get into Hogwarts?”   
“I was invited in” she said, then raised her eyebrows at Harry's expression, and laughed. “No – I did! I acted like I should be there, and everyone behaved like I should be. Security has slipped there since your day, is what you're about to say, but the only person who did stop me was a big old man in a funny coat, and I just said that I was there to see Albus and Scorpius and he patted me on the shoulder and let me go on by!”   
Oh, Hagrid, Harry groaned internally. Of course he had. No secrets there, then, and probably no point even talking to Hagrid about it, because he was old and kind and he would never, ever, ever, learn. Bad enough that he was talking about trying to establish a few giant families in the Forbidden Forest besides Grawp and his small brood (small being relative, of course), and that Harry could never drop by without warning him by owl in advance in case he was doing something that Harry did not want to know about unless it was drawn to his attention, which he prayed it never would be.   
“When you saw him duel Dumbledore – was it magnificent?”   
“I didn't see most of it – I was shielded by him” Harry admitted, “but I don't believe the world has seen the like since. Voldemort was a powerful wizard, but Dumbledore was better, and Voldemort never really dared to face him. I don't think he would have even then, if his hand hadn't been forced. He was a coward – he liked to attack witches and wizards when they were off their guard, at home, sleeping, or torture muggles who had no chance of fighting back” Or even have an idea of what was happening to them. “How were you hidden from Hogwarts?”   
“I don't know. Why didn't anyone from your side come looking for me?”   
“We didn't know. What contacts did Euphemia Rowle have with Death Eaters?”  
“None. No, wait, my mother's husband, after he got out of Azkaban – he told me who I was”   
Now Harry saw it – or thought he did. Euphemia Rowle and Rodolphus Lestrange had cooked this up between them, and sent this woman after him, after his children. He doubted she was who she thought she was at all – she might be anyone, from anywhere, because it had seemed so strange that Voldemort, who never loved another human being, could or would conceive a child. He was suddenly so angry that he stood up, pacing back and forth for a moment. She stared at him, then grinned, as if she thought she'd gotten to him, and he shook his head sharply, and swept from the room.   
“We'll continue this interview later”


	3. 12 Grimmauld Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A month passed, and January storms faded into a February-ish promise of spring. Ginny tried three times to get the scorch marks off of the dining table at 12 Grimmauld Place – left there by an overlooked howler sent by Susan Bones, who was furious that Potter had dared try to make a deal with her client without her there, and promising that she would rake him across the coals in front of the Wizengamot for this – before throwing her hands in the air and declaring it a job for Ron the next time he came by. Harry liked Susan, as much as he knew her (he could faintly remember that she had been in the DA, a blurry face and a good wand form) – but he had a sneaking suspicion that she was right... but he hadn't coerced Delphine in any way, so he wasn't wrong, either.

A month passed, and January storms faded into a February-ish promise of spring. Ginny tried three times to get the scorch marks off of the dining table at 12 Grimmauld Place – left there by an overlooked howler sent by Susan Bones, who was furious that Potter had dared try to make a deal with her client without her there, and promising that she would rake him across the coals in front of the Wizengamot for this – before throwing her hands in the air and declaring it a job for Ron the next time he came by. Harry liked Susan, as much as he knew her (he could faintly remember that she had been in the DA, a blurry face and a good wand form) – but he had a sneaking suspicion that she was right... but he hadn't coerced Delphine in any way, so he wasn't wrong, either.   
Harry bent his mind to the task of research. It had never come naturally to him – not that he was stupid, he had never been stupid, but he was no Hermione – but he had resources at his fingers now. He asked junior aurors to look through archives. He talked to those of his fellows who kept a foot in the muggle world (Harry lived almost entirely out of it these days, and it seemed sometimes almost like a dream), who told him about advances in science and what might be done with blood (it always came down to blood in the end), and then had it done. He talked to old men and older women whose faces were lined with loss, and he thought about what they told him. In the end, he compiled a file, and left it on the desk of the Minister for Magic, to do with as she wanted.   
That might explain why – without any warning – Hermione Granger-Weasley descended on Harry and Ron, who were quietly having a pint in the Leaky Cauldron with Neville, who was showing off a new plant that Luna Lovegood (who had not given up her name on marrying Rolf Scamander, because it was a perfectly good one, thank you) had sent him from Borneo. It was a sort of pitcher plant thing that – under the right conditions – might grow large enough to swallow a man. Neville demonstrated with a little toy man, and seemed delighted by the prospect of growing it in the castle's greenhouses. Apparently there were all sorts of magical applications for it, and Madame Pomfrey (who had seemed very old when they were at school, to their callow eyes, and now seemed eternal and ageless) was very excited about the prospect of it for acne treatment.   
Neville stood up when Hermione turned up (her face was like thunder, and promised the lightning to come) and quickly said that it was lovely to see them all, and he could see they had something to talk about, ministry business was it? And he'd better be going, see you later, Ron, Harry, Hermione!  
“What is this, Harry?” Hermione hissed, putting the file down on the table like it was a bomb waiting to go off. “Why did you waste your time on -”  
“We needed to know” Harry said, interrupting her. “I needed to know – I felt... you know, guilty, looking at all the stuff that Bones put together about... I needed to know what the truth was. We all did”   
“I helped! Did you know there's this muggle thing called Dee Enn Ayy that -”  
“Yes, Ron, I know what DNA is, thank you” Hermione said sharply. “Who does this benefit, Harry, really?”   
“I would have thought” Harry said, “that you would recognise the value of the truth, Hermione”   
Her face flushed, and she looked away for a moment, apparently ashamed.   
“There's a family out there who might get back a child they lost” he said, very gently. “Maybe they won't want to know – considering what that child grew into – but... but we failed her, I think, we should have known and should have found her. People knew things, separately, but they didn't put it all together. A vanished child from a burned house, presumed dead with her family, another where she shouldn't be, a letter from Hogwarts that was never sent – I think that was a former death eater on the staff by the way, doing a favour, though I haven't enough to make an arrest – tutors hired who saw something odd but never spoke up, and... and, well, you see it all? And it makes sense – she's a Vablatsky, they're all seers. I think he wanted one that was absolutely his”   
It was a cupboard under the stairs that you didn't get out of until it had twisted you into its shape. He'd met the wizard once who'd been in charge of ensuring that muggle social services didn't get interested in the too-skinny too-bullied too-neglected not-quite-meeting-his-development-goals something-is-wrong-at-home child, and the man had sobbed, and said he didn't ask for forgiveness, he didn't deserve it, but he'd thought it was what was keeping Harry safe – Dumbledore had said – he was so sorry. Harry had forgiven him, or at least told him he had his forgiveness, because he could imagine how awful a task it would be, to put a memory charm on every muggle with good intentions (teachers, relatives of Dudley's friends, the GP, even a whole social services team) who might have thought to investigate, knowing that it meant you were leaving a little boy at number four privet drive, where he was loved only in the most forced way. He didn't doubt that Petunia had loved him in the best way she could, but that had not been good enough. They had had a sort of reconciliation after Vernon had died, when she had seemed suddenly liberated, but it had never been comfortable.   
“I can't forgive her for what she did to my son, or to the other boy” he said, more strongly. “And I don't think anyone should. She chose to do it, to murder and torture, and even when things are dark we have choices, but she deserves the truth. We all deserve the truth” Dumbledore had kept it from him, and see where that had ended? Secrets spawned more secrets, and dragged everyone down with them.  
“He's right, love” Ron said, catching Hermione's hand. “I wouldn't have helped, if I didn't think... well, I know the end of the war was chaos, and we were all mourning, but...” She squeezed his hand back (they loved each other and fitted into one another perfectly, squabbles and all).   
“Gods bones, the two of you are so sentimental!” Hermione said roughly. “You might be right – morally – but this complicates everything. What do you want me to do?” This was an acceptance of the situtation.   
“Nothing” Harry said, raising his hands. “We're not going to... I don't know, make an announcement, put it in the Prophet, nothing like that. I'll hand what we've dug up over to Bones, and then we'll inform what's left of the family, leave that in their laps. If the Prophet get hold of it -”  
“They will” Hermione said gloomily, foreseeing this as one more stick to beat her with. “At the appeal, if nothing else”   
“We can cross that bridge when we come to it” Ron said, with a shrug. “But we really shouldn't be talking about this here or it will be in the Prophet” They all looked around, slightly guiltily, but no one seemed to be listening in.   
“There's one upside” Ron said, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “It'll completely erode her support amongst the dark forces. Who's going to want to break a Verblatsky, not a Riddle or a Black or a Lestrange, out of Azkaban?”   
February shaded into March and into April, and the Easter holidays came around. Hermione's position was a little rocky, but no one had asked her to tender her resignation yet. Luna came back to London on a flying visit, bringing treats and slightly suspect gifts. She was a favourite of all the children, with her very intense way of listening and her habit of taking them utterly seriously, and she and Albus went on several long walks around London, leaving early in the morning with a cooler bag full of strips of chicken and not coming back until well after dark. Harry suspected she had taken him to see thestrals, but he didn't ask. It was a private thing. He visited Delphine once, twice, a few times. She gave him information which turned out to be good. She put on a little weight and seemed to be making an effort.  
He talked to old Madam Verblatsky, who cried and asked him to leave her lonely little apartment. He couldn't blame her, and he couldn't imagine what it must feel like – to lose your family, and have them given back to you, but wrong. He approved her as a visitor, when the form came across his desk.   
He was hauled up in front of the Wizengamot by Susan Bones, who eventually concluded that he had done nothing actionable, but that it was certainly questionable. She bought him a butterbeer afterwards, and they talked about DA meetings and Hogwarts and their children and the time she had cursed Malfoy. She and her wife were invited to the next dinner party Harry and Ginny held, which Harry had to leave early after an Auror emerged, panting, from the fireplace in the kitchen to inform him that there had been an incident at the Ministry – a Nu Death Eater, the group invigorated by the events of the previous year, had set off a charm that had killed three people and injured a good number more. Harry turned pale, and left for the Ministry, wand in hand, to do what he could, shortly followed by Hermione. Ginny brought out the pudding, a monstrous chocolate cake Harry had made by hand, and the remaining guests ate it quietly, the distant sounds of their children (who had not yet realised that there were sweets available) the only noise in the room.


	4. Spring, Azkaban

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spring had come to Azkaban, and with it it had brought a gentle blossoming. The apple trees which had been planted there almost two decades ago had budded and then burst into life. It softened the fortress a little, and promised sweetness to come.

Spring had come to Azkaban, and with it it had brought a gentle blossoming. The apple trees which had been planted there almost two decades ago had budded and then burst into life. It softened the fortress a little, and promised sweetness to come.   
“So what I'm saying is,” Susan Bones said, tapping her quill against her notebook with a soft sssh, “you don't have to take this. I think it's a good deal, personally, and one I'm very pleased with negotiating, but you don't have to accept it” Right at this moment, Susan wanted nothing more then to be home with her wife and son, who she was privately terrified for. Her little family was everything those people hated – wrong genders, wrong bloodlines, wrong politics – and this job made her more vulnerable then she wanted to think about. She'd thought about quitting, giving in, running away, but she couldn't do it. It would be a betrayal of everything she was, and of the light she had fought to try – that so many had died trying – to pull this country into. Instead, she had asked the Ministry for more protection and even considered having a Fidelius charm placed upon her home, with only herself as secret keeper. There was bravery, and there was stupidity, and Susan had never quite tipped over that line. She was not a Gryffindor, with all the reckless bravery that implied. Hard work and toil, supply lines not cavalry charges, were what carried the day.   
“I'm... not sure” Delphine admitted, and she seemed to be gazing slightly past Susan, as if she could see something that wasn't quite there. “It would certainly seem to benefit me” Someone had brightened the room, just a little, with a branch of apple-blossom stuck in a jam-jar put on a high-up window ledge. Susan had wondered who had thought to do that – not that the blossom was not white as well, but it still made the whole thing seem a little brighter.   
“The Ministry would be willing to reduce your sentence, or at least not to contest a reduction in your appeal, yes, that you were under influence – I might even be able to argue that a compulsion might have been placed on you, there are all sorts of dark magic” Susan said, “and... well, you could be out on parole in maybe fifteen years. That's not so very long, compared to life”   
“Well, there's the rub” she blinked, and seemed to come back to herself. “I shan't deny my father, not in any official statement. He was my father”  
“I know you believe that” Susan said, and she sounded a little tired. “But the evidence seems overwhelming that you are Veleda Verblatsky, and I don't think it's in your best interests to pass up a gift from the Ministry like that”  
“Their evidence” Delphine said roughly. “But the prophecy -”   
“Prophecies are infamously tricky” Susan waved this away, “I've never met one that doesn't have at least two possible interpretations, and I don't think this one was in your favour at all – but I shouldn't be arguing with you about this. The offer is on the table, and I suggest you take it” She had heard at least a dozen interpretations of that damn thing, which wasn't even recorded as a prophecy by the Department of Mysteries, and she had pushed firmly for the one which looked best for her client. The child might be Harry Potter, or his son, or... there were a number of candidates who weren't her client, and the Dark Lord had not risen. Or if he had, it had only been to fall again (how could anything be certain, when time travel was involved?).   
“I'll think about it” Delphi muttered, and Susan couldn't help but be pleased. Almost as much as she was pleased that the woman's sparse frame had filled out a little, to the point where she resembled a Black not at all. She had grown to like her client, a little. It was easier to when she could see her as a child who had been hurt, and not the daughter of the man who had seen her family dead – and who had personally murdered her Aunt.   
“That's all I can ask” Susan said, and stood up, gathering up her possessions. “I think I can buy you a day, maybe two, to think, but... this offer isn't going to be around forever, and I shouldn't think we can get you a better one”  
She was accompanied home by an Auror – a middle-aged woman with brilliant blue eyes that Susan suspected had been magically augmented, and who seemed more then a little jumpy. Susan didn't blame her. The attack on the Ministry was almost unprecedented, and everyone felt a little jumpy. If you passed through the entrance hall now, it was as though nothing had happened (and it wasn't the first time there had been a battle in there), but everyone knew. The Auror saw her to her door, then disappeared off into the street, presumably to do... whatever it was Aurors did all day. Having an Auror guarding you was not unlike having a cat: they came in when they wanted tea, attention, or when something interesting was happening, and were extremely jumpy about loud noises as well as suspicious of novelty.   
She was just about to put her key in the door when she realised that something felt off. She couldn't say what it was, except some terrible instinct that nothing was quite right. Susan fumbled with her keys, letting out a little curse, and using that as cover whipped her wand from her pocket, turning, wand out, to face... nothing. An empty road. She shook her head, squinted, the curse in her mouth dying on her lips. She breathed out, forcing herself to relax, to think. What was off...? Was anything off, or was it just paranoia...? She turned her back again, and unlocked her door, slipping inside.   
Nothing wrong.   
In Azkaban, Delphine – or Veleda, or whoever she was, sat in her cell and thought very hard about who she was, and who she might choose to be, and whether she had been handed a gift of reinvention, which is a rare and precious thing in life. Not absolution – because absolution wasn't on offer – but the opportunity to be someone else, which was a sort of magic. She didn't know who Veleda Verblatsky might be, but she might be willing to find out.   
A week passed. In Grimmauld Place, the Potters saw very little of Harry or anyone else, and there was even talk of sending the children back to Hogwarts early, just to be safe, something Albus and James fought fiercely and Lily pretended to consider. Ron came to stay, bringing Hugo and Rose with him, and they all pretended to ignore the fact that there seemed to be Aurors dropping in at all hours, having tea in the kitchen, chatting with Ron about this and that, begging war stories from Ginny (those who weren't old enough to have fought themselves), or wondering if they'd forgotten their pen here. Draco seemed to drop Scorpius off just about every day, and he and Albus spent long hours at the kitchen table huddled over revision notes – which meant that more often then not, there was an Auror puzzling over Albus' terrible handwriting and reminiscing about Hogwarts.   
Draco and Harry met more than once in the hall, and walked around each other stiffly, with the air that they needn't do so, but were choosing to out of consideration for the other party. Their children found this hilarious, and had established a betting pool on when – not if – one of them would draw their wand on the other. They had been enemies for a very long time, and old habits died extremely hard. It was probably only that Harry was very obviously exhausted and spent more hours at the Ministry – Ginny had taken to using the floo network to bring him dinner, though that was more often then not something he had cooked months ago and put in their muggle freezer, because Ginny hated cooking – then he had done in a very long time that prevented this from actually coming true.  
The Ministry put out a statement about Veleda Verblatsky's parentage and her co-operation with the Ministry on the Nu Death Eater problem from Azkaban, and even invited a Daily Prophet reporter to conduct a short interview. She was charming and engaging and candid, and the reporter found herself charmed. Her lawyer – a veteran of the Battle of Hogwarts – also gave a brief interview, as did her paternal grandmother, who seemed overjoyed to even have a chance at having her granddaughter back.   
There was a good deal of emphasis on charges against her not having been dropped prior to her appeal, because what else could the Ministry say? There was no doubt that she had murdered a child, even if everything else was largely reliant on witnesses who could easily be mistaken. There were grieving parents who wanted – and deserved – justice, which was something the Prophet went out of its way to point out, even reprinting the obituary, complete with a black and white photo of a grinning boy wearing a prefects badge that caught the light when he moved. He had been one of three children. Not brilliant but kind, played Quidditch but wasn't quite good enough to make the house team, the sort of person who made an impact on those who knew him, but whose ripples had never had a chance to extend much further.   
Susan Bones read the newspaper at her kitchen table with Edmund in her lap – he wasn't quite old enough to have stopped climbing there – his eyes on some sort of muggle game Zarya had bought him in which brightly coloured cartoon characters fought each other, his chubby fingers working busily. She was happy enough with the coverage they'd been given, but less so about the other stories – no further arrests of Nu Death Eaters (who she thought were children, playing at being Death Eaters, but no less terrifying and dangerous for it) – and the price of floo powder was going up again. She hadn't been able to shake the feeling of wrongness, but she didn't know whether she could trust her own instincts – look at her flat, which she was perfectly willing to admit she had chosen because she thought it safe, not beautiful. She was definitely going to apply a fidelius charm, if only  
“What do we want for breakfast?” she asked, jiggling him a little to get his attention, because she could feel her thoughts about to take a spiral, and the only way to avoid that was to do something else entirely, otherwise she would be useless all day.   
“Bacon?” Edmund suggested hopefully, not looking up from the game.   
“Oh no, mister” she grinned, kissing the top of his head. “No bacon in this house! Mummy would be very upset. Do you want... eggy soldiers?”   
There was a moment of quiet consideration, then a nod of acquiescence. She set him down on the chair, and put a pan of water on to boil, without magic, the way her muggle father used to cook, and got down the toaster. There was a knock at the door and she frowned – who could that be at this hour...? Zarya was out on a staff training morning, leaving she and Edmund to their own devices. She walked to the door and peered through the spy-hole, seeing the familiar face of the Auror who had escorted her last from Azkaban, and undid the chain, opening it to find that she had her wand out.   
“What's the matter, is -?”   
There was a flash, and she forgot the rest of the sentence. She forgot everything.


	5. An interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumour spreads quickly in Azkaban. It slips from person to person, from a glimpse of the front page of the Prophet, an overheard comment from an Auror, a whispered conversation with a visitor, as certain and unstoppable as a flood. It is – inevitably – muddy and contaminated. Everyone has their own spin to put on the story, and details are forgotten or inflated or simply made up to make the story sound better.

Rumour spreads quickly in Azkaban. It slips from person to person, from a glimpse of the front page of the Prophet, an overheard comment from an Auror, a whispered conversation with a visitor, as certain and unstoppable as a flood. It is – inevitably – muddy and contaminated. Everyone has their own spin to put on the story, and details are forgotten or inflated or simply made up to make the story sound better.   
The first rumour caught up with Delphine the day after it happened. A woman – small but sturdy, with clever hands (Delphine had heard a rumour that she was part-goblin, which she would not discount, though the thought of it disgusted her), sidled up to her and relayed it.  
“I heard,” she said, “that your lawyer's gone missing. S'a dark mark above her house and everything, terrible mess inside. I heard there was blood up the walls, and the Ministry took at least one body out”  
Delphi didn't react, just looked at her, one eyebrow raised. She was good at this, and she forced her heartbeat to slow, her breathing to regulate. It is a skill, to pretend that you do not care about information, or that it isn't a surprise to you, and one she cultivated throughout her childhood. Delphine was not born who she was – on the contrary, she was carefully cultivated.  
“...and I wanted to let you know” the witch said uncomfortably, “if you... uh, when you... well, you'll remember me and mine, right? That I brought you this, first?”   
“I'll remember” Delphi inclined her head, and the other woman – Sidebottom? - backed off. She had a certain power and status here that she would never have anticipated, but which in retrospect seems inevitable. She found it bizarre – it was her due, but it was bizarre to be so looked to, so feared, so thought of.   
The second rumour is similar to the first – but brought by someone who wants to spit it in her face, and tell her they are never going back to those bad old days – and the third adds the detail that the Prophet reported that Susan's son is in St Mungos. Delphine did not know that she had a son, and she put the information under her tongue like a pearl. Did her lawyer have a husband? Was he pureblood? The fourth is a wizard seeking to curry favour with her, who told her confidently that there was no Dark Mark, but that everyone knows it was her followers (she didn't realise she had followers), and that he'd heard that it was an Auror who did the deed. As three days pass, the rumours get wilder and wilder – Bones' body was found, her son was raised as an Inferi, the Ministry has shut down the floo network, someone has seen Dementors in central Glasgow, Bones' muggle wife was secretly a long-term Death Eater plant, the Ministry are behind the whole thing, who could trust a mudblood like the Minister anyway? – that she was forced to finally discount them.   
After those three days, she got a visitor. Their face was as familiar to her as her own – lined dark skin, eyes as green as grass, and a still-pale lightning scar that stood out – and she hated it and was pleased to see it in equal measures, because it meant she would get answers. He looked tired, and she was glad, because damn straight he should look tired. He should be putting all his resources into finding Bones, who (Delphine was slightly disconcerted to find) she cared about the well-being of. At the very least, she was a valuable asset, and not one Delphi wanted wasted or hurt or -   
“Where's my lawyer?” she asked, as soon as he sat down in the little interrogation room. “I want her here” She was pleased to see how discomfited he looked by that.   
“That's the issue” he said uncomfortably, “We have reason to believe -”   
“She's been kidnapped. Or murdered. Or both?” Delphine said lazily, and enjoyed the minute tightening of the lines around his eyes. “It wasn't me. I was right here. If you think I did it, or ordered it, or... whatever, and this is an interrogation, I want a representative”   
“That's not -” he started, then seemed to get hold of himself. “That's not what I'm here for”   
“Well, what is it you want, then?” Delphi said, crossing her legs daintily. “and what's in it for me?”   
“I want,” he said, through gritted teeth, “a little co-operation. I can offer some privileges in return”  
“Tell me what happened” she said, leaning back with a little rattle of chains. “and I'll co-operate. I want my lawyer back, and I want some time knocked off my sentence. We can't all sit in here forever”  
“We'll discuss that when this is concluded” he said, as if he's conceding a lot. She supposes he is: she made him watch his family die, which is some small compensation for keeping her from her father.   
“No. We'll discuss it now” she said, and she enjoyed that she held some of the cards – though she supposed he could walk out at any moment. “I'll help you. You'll take at least five years off of my sentence – call it good conduct or something – and we'll call it good”   
“Done” She was a little surprised by that – she should probably have asked for more, and obviously they're in direr straits then she ever expected. “Tell me what happened”   
“We believe...” he hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. She hopes it's everything. “She was abducted three days ago, from her home, either by an Auror who had been placed under the Imperius curse or by someone masquerading as her. We don't know, because we haven't found Forney to ask. Her wife wasn't home at the time, and we actually arrived at the scene before she did...”  
A wife? Delphi had not been expecting that, but she supposed she shouldn't be surprised. “And her son?”  
“Was the reason we got there so quickly” Potter said, and she thought she saw a gleam of pride in his eyes. “He went for the floo powder the moment he heard a curse go off and dived for the ministry”   
She grinned, very slowly. Of course any of Bones' offspring would be that quick off the mark – she'd seen how jumpy being in Azkaban had made the woman, she'd probably run the boy through a dozen drills.   
“What I need to know” Potter said, and his tone was hard, “Is where your followers are, and what they are doing”   
“Don't have any” she said briskly, and raised her hands in an elaborately clanky shrug at the look on his face. “I mean it! I was acting one hundred percent alone, you thwarted all my plans, well done, very proud of you, I don't have anything to do with this shit, I like her”   
“You knew where the werewolves were” he pointed out, teeth gritted.  
“Well, they weren't hard to find” she said, “I hadn't gotten around to recruiting wizards. Most of my father's followers are too old or too dead, you know that” Not quite true, but she didn't believe that any of the very few younger wizards she had felt out would try this. Her plan had been to change time entirely – why bother making connections in the here and now? The werewolves hadn't panned out as her distraction to drive the Ministry crazy, so she'd taken another approach. “These people are nothing to do with me”   
“Then why,” he said, “do they want a prisoner exchange. With you”   
“They... what?” she stared at him, utterly taken aback. “They want...? with me...?” She tilted her head to the side just a little, utterly taken aback by this information.   
“An owl,” he said, and he sounded angrier then she'd ever seen him, “ that we haven't been able to trace yet, brought the Minister a note yesterday, dictating terms for an exchange, and claiming you as their leader”  
“Their leader” she said, unbelieving. “Fuck me. You're not doing that”  
He snorted. “Of course we're not -”  
“Take me with you” she said urgently. “They're not my people, but they might listen to me. I want my lawyer back, and I want her alive, and the Ministry – and I'm including you - are a bunch of fuck ups”


	6. Hostage

This is what happened: the boy who lived made some calls. Or traveled to the ministry. Sent an owl. Communicated by tiny paper plane. Delphine isn't sure, and she doesn't really care. The details are for someone else to figure out. There's probably some back and forth between Potter and the Minister, and she wouldn't be surprised if the Minister's husband weighed in too, because she's studied them and she knows at least a little of how they work. Everyone who's ever read the Prophet – and she has, all the issues going back to when he was eleven or so, every one that mentioned him – can see that they were tight, right from the very beginning, and they're family now too, so why wouldn't they? They've got the Ministry all wrapped up between them (Minister of Magic, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, and then there's the rest of the Weasleys, who seem to have gone far – curse-breakers and international law experts and journalists and businessmen, and, well, they're incredibly well connected), which is very clever, she supposes, all that accumulation of power in the hands of one family, even if they are mudbloods and traitors.  
So Delphine sat in that tiny room, and she waited. She made plans, and then contingency plans, and then threw them out and started again, just for something to do that wasn't the unbearable burden of thinking about how things were happening without her (things were being decided without her) that she had no power over. She had done what she could, she had said her piece, but it might not be enough, and she is infuriated by the thought of losing someone that belongs to her. Delphine knows what it is like, for mother and father to be distant far-off stories of war and victory and loss, and she will not have it for Susan's boy.   
When she was very young, she was allowed – or at least not chased off unless she made a nuisance of herself – to sit very quietly on the stairs with a doll, or under the kitchen table, while the adults discussed big grown up things. She hadn't known who she was then, or how important she was (how important she should have been), but she had loved the quiet retellings of the great deeds they and others had done – the ambushes, the reverses, the clever escapes, the daring raids, the clever killings of traitors and mudbloods – and her father had always been at the centre of it, Lord of the Dark Forces, cruel to his enemies, worse to those who betrayed him. He was going to remake the world in the right image, they said, if only -  
She had been seventeen when the truth had come out. Who they'd been, why they'd trusted her to that old woman, what it all was about. She'd run away. Spent a few months living amongst the muggles like a ghost, helping herself to whatever she wanted (a flat for a night, a meal, some pretty clothes, it didn't matter, only that she wanted or needed it and they didn't matter) with magic and memory charms. Any witch could live like that, if they wanted, and she spent that time living wild. It had been summer, and the magical schools had been out. She'd made her first few contacts in that month, in the hidden places of London, in the right pubs and in the right clubs and the right little shops (most of magical London might have been contained in Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, but it was ludicrous to think that magicians might limit themselves so). She'd drunk wine out of the bottle with hags by Westminster Bridge (Delphine liked hags, she liked how few fucks they gave about how wizards saw them, how secure they were about themselves), partied with just-graduated Hogwarts students (brilliant young minds enjoying a last summer of glory before real work began), sat in parks and watched muggles go back and forth, even sallied forth out of London to the continent, to dragon sanctuaries and veela colonies and once (for a day, on a lark) went to spy on the family of giants loose in the forest about Hogwarts. She'd visited Paris and Amsterdam, and then worked her way east, turning eighteen in the process. There'd been a few men (and more women, once she figured out what it was she really wanted) left behind in sleepy tangles in beds she didn't own, and even a few brief relationships that fell apart when they realised she couldn't give them anything of what she was. She'd taken everything she could, and not left a thing behind.   
In a shop in Kiev, she paid over a fortune in coins-that-had-been-leaves to have the Augury tattooed on her back, and then she slunk home, ready to take on the mantle of what and who she was. She had settled down, and studied her enemies, and waited for her moment – and honestly, the Time Turner had been a gift. If given a chance, who wouldn't turn back time to right a wrong? Not Harry Potter, apparently, though his son had been more susceptible to the idea of heroism and righting wrongs, and now... and now, here she was, in an Azkaban interrogation room, waiting to see if her greatest foe would let her help save a woman whose only crime was to try to do the right thing by her, because she didn't want her son to lose her.   
She buried her head in her hands and let out a low groan. Maybe she wasn't her father's daughter after all, not in the ways that mattered – if she was, she wouldn't compromise. She would sacrifice a pawn rather then working with an enemy, she wouldn't be sitting here, in Azkaban. She was a failure, and why should she not be a failure all the way -? Or at least, enough to claim what was hers, to escape, to make new plans. Keep this bargain, let herself be trusted a little, and then? She didn't know what she was going to do. She was unsure what Potter would do. She was making this up as she went along.   
That was how she ended up on one side of a bridge in the fog, a portkey in her pocket, long fingers curled around it. The mist swirled around her feet, and she wondered if it was just mist. Was there ever such a thing as just mist? Something that wasn't made by magic, called up to serve a purpose? The thought was a pointless one, and she shook it out, thinking instead of the aurors at her back: Woodruff, White, Singh, Khan, Smith, Potter. Six men and women, the very best that the magical world could produce.   
It was a hasty cobbled-together plan (she had overheard the aurors arguing over polyjuice potion, disguise charms, even bringing in Teddy Lupin, who wasn't even a third of the way through training, but their boss had overruled them, with a stern injunction that if this ever leaked to the Daily Prophet they were all dead men walking) and she wasn't sure it would work. It required them to put a great deal of trust in her not to simply blow the plan... although if it were her, she would have a plan for when she did blow the trust they put in her.   
Potter grabbed her arm, and said urgently in her ear, quietly enough none of the others could hear: “You've got a choice. You've always got a choice, even if it's one you can't just make once. You want to be Veleda, you can be, but if you walk away now -”   
She wrenched her arm out of his grasp, and gave him a grin that was predatory in its intent and malice. “I can't be Veleda right now. Veleda wouldn't get my lawyer back, Potter” She strode towards the bridge, reaching for what she was, what she needed to be.  
“Hello, you bastards!” Delphi yells out as she takes her first step onto the arched stone bridge. She can hear the river beneath her in full spate, its waters surging after the previous night's storms. Behind her the headlights of the ministry's cars cut into the mist, and she envisions it illuminating her from the back, like some strange sort of angel. She likes that image. “I'm Delphine Riddle, and I fucking hope you've got your damn hostage”   
“Prove it!” comes a yell from the other side of the bridge.   
“Screw you! If you don't have her, I'll damn well kill you all with my bare hands, she's mine”   
“...okay, yeah, that's probably her” comes a voice out of the mist, with a slightly nervous laugh. “Alright. Make her walk”  
She sees a figure emerge onto the bridge before her, and as she walks towards it, she strains her eyes, trying to make out the figure. Was it Bones...? As she got closer, the figure resolved itself, walking with an odd shuffle that betrayed a damaged knee. The rest Delphi saw in snatches, because to take in the whole would be too much: dark bruising around blank eyes (imperius?), a funny way she held her arm (broken?), mouth a taut line (fighting it?), the other arm limp (was it even there? Was she actually alive, or was someone puppeting her?).   
In that moment, Delphine chose. She didn't choose out of any particularly enlightened motives, but out of possessiveness and fury and because whatever Potter was, he wasn't doing this to her – her friends right this moment. She darted forwards, pulling the portkey from her pocket, and threw herself at Susan Bones. She hit her hard and high, wrapping her arms around her in a bone-crushing hug as they both went over the side of the bridge and out into the empty air.   
“Fuck you, I'm fucking Veleda Verblatsky!” she screamed, and then they hit the water.


	7. aftermath

Afterwards – after a series of ambushes and arrests and co-ordinated raids and parents who insist that their child could never be involved in all of this you have to understand – Harry got a moment to catch his breath. Delphine-Veleda-whoever-she-is met his eye and grinned, her hair still damp with river water, and he wondered if he's been played. He dismissed the thought, because that much paranoia is not good for his health.   
Afterwards – after a few days, and a lot of lobbying by interested parties - Veleda visited Susan in hospital, escorted by three Aurors. She was warned that she's still a little hazy, and she might fall asleep halfway through talking, and her appearance might be a little frightening (this was from Daisy, who she met for the first time, and wasn't that interesting?), but that she was doing a lot better. Veleda had never visited St Mungos before, and she was intensely interested by the novel uses that magic seems to be put to here, although she was rapidly hustled through before anyone recognised her or really took notice.   
Susan's appearance was still shocking to Veleda, who is taken aback by the nasty bruising (people did this in her name? Because they thought her lawyer wasn't doing all she could? And that they could trade her for me? She's angry all over again, and gleeful that they'll end up in Azkaban, where she will have every opportunity to let them know how unhappy she is) and the half-regrown arm that lies limply at her side.  
“Afternoon, Susan” she settled herself in the chair by her bedside, clinking the cuffs on her hands very deliberately. “I'm good, by the way. Prison food's looking up, you know. I heard a rumour there might be strawberries next week, but who knows, rumours go around all the time, right?” She took a breath, got a faint smile, continued. “And also I saved your life – you're welcome, by the way – and made a couple of deals with the Ministry, not that that matters because I'm going to be leaving the country soon anyway, they haven't made the prison that can hold me” She squinted at one of the Aurors, who looks unamused, and shrugs. “Hey, it's true”   
“You're exhausting” Susan Bones said, and she sounds distinctly weary.   
“Oh, yeah” Veleda grinned, settling back in the chair. “Let's face it, you wouldn't have me for a client any other way. I am a major catch, and quite possibly the highlight of your career”   
“You're the worst client I ever had” Bones grumbled, turning to look at her. “No other client has gotten me kidnapped by death eater wannabes, and let me tell you, I was at Hogwarts when the Carrows were in charge and they had nothing on them”   
“Oh yeah? Tell me about that” Veleda suggested, and sat back, and let Susan talk, drinking in her success. She's heard this from the other direction, but not from Bones, who has a few new stories and lets her put a few things together that she didn't realise were connected before. After about fifteen minutes, Bones stopped talking, and Veleda realised that she'd fallen asleep. She got up very quietly, and signalled to the Aurors that they could take her away now.   
As they leave, she has to sidestep the Minister for Magic on the way in, and almost takes a step back as the woman's eyes sweep over her, because she has a glare on her that Veleda doesn't like one bit. Instead, Veleda grins, and tips an invisible hat to her, refusing to be intimidated. The woman shakes her head, and sweeps on in with a swish of robes.   
“Back to Azkaban, then?” she inquires of one of the Aurors, who nods stiffly, and takes her wrist to sidealong apparate her. 

Afterwards, Susan Bones in her little flat, and she has her little family around her, perfect and whole. She herself is a little less perfect, and a little less whole, but no one comes out of an experience like that unscathed. Mostly, she's just really, really angry, and trying to work out exactly how much cain she'll have to raise to get her inquiry into all of this. 

Afterwards, in the Potter-Weasley household, a rare moment of peace. No one is arguing or threatening to hex anyone else (Harry assures them that he will hand them over to the people who monitor for underage wizardry personally). On a bed upstairs, Scorpius and Albus lying together, watching muggle television (something Scorpius finds fascinating). Their hands are comfortably intertwined. 

Afterwards, Hermione Granger-Weasley and Ron Granger-Weasley take a holiday, somewhere very quiet, and the threat level for contacting the Minister with business while she's away is elevated to 'New Dark Lord Trying To Take Over The Ministry Right Now, Merlin Help Us All', because her aides are fiercely protective of her and she needs a break. They renew their vows in a small, private ceremony, because this is just for them. 

Afterwards, Veleda – Delphine? - whoever she is, whoever she chooses to be, in Azkaban, because one good deed and a shattered childhood does not mean that the law forgives you your crimes, dreams of summer in her cell. She's considering her escape plan. Maybe travel the continent for a bit. She hears Australia is nice and easy to get lost in, and she's never seen a bunyip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so thanks for reading, and thanks for the comments as I've gone! I really appreciated them! xo


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